CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Having grown impatient from pacing at the entrance of the parking deck, Soren backtracked to the office building. He gave the lobby receptionist a friendly salute as he passed the desk and bounded to the elevator bank with all the casualness of a robber on his first heist.

There was a crush of people waiting to get lifted to their floors, all huddled and chatting amiably about schedules and stock prices. All wearing conference badges that hinted they were affiliated with the event being hosted in between the three buildings.

When Elevator Two opened up and the crowd didn’t move—too distracted by their guide’s rip-roaring storytelling, apparently—Soren edged around them and ignored the apologies from the members on the periphery. Apparently, they were oblivious to their surroundings. Most people were.

They tried to squeeze into the elevator after him but he slapped his hands to the doors and snarled, “Get back.”

No questions asked, they did.

Maybe they were used to following orders. Or maybe they didn’t want to take chances with the snarling lunatic who wore leather and whose pockets projected with suspicious bulges.

Marcella was slumped in the corner with her head bowed low, her legs curled beneath her, and her dense, ropy hair shielding her face.

“Marcie?” He was on his knees so fast his vision blurred momentarily, so when he first pushed her hair out of the way to check her pulse, he wasn’t worried by how gray she looked.

But then he was seeing perfectly fine, and her color wasn’t. What should have been a rich brown was ashen and mottled, and slick with perspiration.

“Marcie. Wake up.”

Her skin was too pliant—like dough a child had left out and then tried to soften with a hopeless soak in water. His fingers left indentations that lasted too long, and he could feel her bones as if all the muscle and tissue beneath her skin had melted away.

“What’s wrong with you?”

It didn’t matter. It really didn’t fucking matter. Soren pulled Marcella onto her feet and pressed his fingertips against her neck. Her pulse was thready and her breaths far too infrequent.

She wasn’t going to be able to walk, but he didn’t want to be seen carrying her out of the building. They’d be too memorable. People would ask questions, and Dana didn’t like that shit. She didn’t like her crew drawing unnecessary attention, especially on routine go-sees that were supposed to be in-and-out jobs.

“All right, folks, get back,” he said to the lookie-loos holding the door open behind him. He draped his jacket over Marcella’s shoulders and pulled the hood up over her head. “She’s got extremely low blood pressure. I knew she was taking too long for some reason.”

“Poor thing,” one of the women in the group said. “I’ve got a granola bar in my conference bag if you want something quick.”

“You’re kind to offer, but she has provisions in the car. Unfortunately, this happens more often than I’d care to admit. She’s stubborn that way.” He scooped her into his arms and turned sideways to depart the elevator. A quick glance down the hall revealed a stairway door partially hidden behind a large potted palm. If his guess were correct, he could go down a floor and then exit the building through a side door that would put them in a narrow alley between the building and the hotel next door.

He offered his most pleasant grin to the group of professionals as he passed, and murmured some bullshit about hardheaded women who thought they were exempt from basic human needs.

He held his breath until the stairway door closed behind him, and then bounded down the steps, pressing his chin to Marcella’s clammy forehead. He didn’t know who to call. Normally, when in dealing with his own ailments, he took a wait-and-see strategy. Bears had incredible recuperative abilities. Not even a shotgun blast could do much harm to a born-Bear with Soren’s level of strength.

He hit the door release with his hip and stepped outside into the shadows exactly where he hoped. After a moment’s pause to orient himself, he headed toward the street and the garage. Then he stopped again, thinking about witnesses. They’d look less suspicious if she were on his back. He’d simply be the guy happily complying with a girlfriend’s playful request to carry her on his back, and no one would give them a second look.

“Can’t carry you like you’re an invalid,” he said.

He got her situated and started walking again, talking to her as he performed his good boyfriend act. The fact that she wasn’t responding didn’t matter. No one gave them more than a cursory look as they passed.

He’d never been so pleased to have a vehicle in such an isolated part of a parking deck than right then. Maneuvering her into the backseat, and then peeling his coat off her so he could drape it over her cold torso more like a blanket probably made him look like he was trying to dispose of a body.

“Marcella?”

Her skin was rippling over the muscles of her face, like gentle waves in a shallow pond. Soren didn’t understand what was happening. If she’d been a shapeshifter, he would have written off the odd occurrence to the vagaries of paranormal biology, but she wasn’t a shapeshifter.

“Hold tight, sweetheart. I’ll call Doc. She might—”

“No.” Her hand darted out from under his coat and gripped the wrist of the hand he’d been about to remove his phone with, and her eyelids snapped open.

“No,” she repeated weakly. “No.”

She sounded as though she were choking, or about to, but more distressing than that was the fact that her eyes hadn’t only gone watery, but they looked like water. No irises. No pupils. No whites. They were transparent orbs that shimmered behind obsidian black lashes.

What the fuck?

“Don’t. Take me back.”

“To where? What’s happening to you? Tell me!”

She closed her eyes and, gulping, pulled her hand back beneath the coat. “Motel. Please.”

“But you need a—”

“A hot bath. That’s all.”

“What do you mean, that’s all? Has this happened to you before?”

She made a jerky nod.

“So, you know what this is?”

Another nod.

“You need to tell me.”

“Drive. Please.”

Fuck.

He didn’t want to argue with her—not there. He’d simply have to hope that there was plenty of time for them to have their argument later. He’d have to explain to her how foolish keeping secrets from him was.

Gently, he closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side.

He was on his own. He wasn’t going to call his father for research, and she’d asked him not to call Doc. It seemed he’d picked a hell of a time to fly solo.

___

The sound of loud drumming of water into a tub stirred Marcella from sleep.

She sat, barely upright, in the corner of her motel room’s tight bathroom. The Bear kneeling over the tub side, working the knobs, took up most of the space in the room.

Her attempt at contracting her diaphragm so she could clear her throat failed, so she tried the next best option and let her foot fall against his shin.

He looked back at her and stood up in a hurry, grabbing a towel. “The bath will be ready in a moment. I don’t know how warm you like the water, but I don’t think I ran it too hot.”

She managed to swallow. “What are you doing?”

“Doing what you said. In the parking deck, you said you needed to get into a tub.”

“I did?” She didn’t even have the energy to grimace. She closed her eyes again instead and concentrated on making her breaths deeper and more rhythmic. Even that was a chore.

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember… Was it Kim?”

“Kim? Pamela’s daughter Kim?”

“Yes. I saw Kim, and I don’t know what happened next. Will remember later.”

That was usually her pattern. She’d work herself to a liquid state, and her memories of the events happening immediately before her collapse would flee and return after she’d regained her usual health. After few hours rest, she’d be well. But she still needed to figure out what she could do to protect herself the next time she encountered an energy leech like Cortney. She’d been an unpredictable element Marcella would have never been able to account for.

“You can go.” She splayed her fingers and wriggled her toes, happy to feel them again. He’d taken her shoes and socks off, along with her jacket.

Somehow, she’d have to get the rest of her clothes off on her own, or at the very least, empty her pockets well enough that if she slid into the water dressed, nothing valuable would be destroyed.

“You told me not to call Doc,” he said.

She didn’t remember that, but that seemed like something she’d say. Her self-preservation reflex was extraordinarily powerful when she was in that out-of-mind state. She didn’t know if that was normal. Her mother didn’t talk about her transformations, and her grandmother behaved as though saying that everything was normal made it so.

“Nothing she can do to help.” She gestured subtly to the door—a flick of her hand toward the opening that he might not have even seen. The movement was so small. “You can go.”

He reached into the tub and turned off the water.

“Do you need help up?”

Yes.

“No, I’ll manage.”

“I want to believe you.” He crouched in front of her, forearms draped atop his thighs and his jaw tight with tension. “I really do. I want to believe you’ll spring to your feet the moment I walk out of that door and that I won’t have to check in repeatedly to make sure you haven’t accidentally drowned yourself.”

“You don’t need to worry about that.” She couldn’t be drowned. Not easily, anyway.

Water couldn’t be drowned. Water might have a hard time getting itself to the tub, though. Four feet seemed an excruciatingly far trek.

She sighed and lifted her right hand to remove her left glove. She could tolerate getting anything else wet, but not her good leather.

She got the glove off after a minute, then the right in about the same amount of time. All the while, Soren leaned against the doorframe and watched with casual curiosity.

She raised her foot to tackle her sock next, and he grunted.

“At the rate you’re going, the water will be cold by the time you get in.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Let me help you.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“You keep saying that, but I don’t understand. What bad thing will happen if you let someone help you for a change? Someone who’s begging to help you?”

“I’m used to doing things on my own.”

“Guess what?” He scoffed. “So am I. I can talk a lot of shit about my parents, and trust me—I do—but I abide most of their demands because they gave me the invaluable gift. They taught me to work and think on my own when I needed to. If I want to, I can get more done in a few hours than some men get done in an entire day. But sometimes, the emotional labor isn’t worth the efficiency, and I’ll call someone and let them carry some of the burden. There’s nothing wrong with conserving your toughness for times when you know you’ll need the strength more.”

Marcella worked off the first sock and leaned the side of her head against the wall to catch her breath. “Are you saying this isn’t one of those times?”

“There’s no one here but you and me. You want to be independent? Fine. I won’t tell anyone I was here if that’s what you want. I won’t tell anyone you had some sort of medical crisis and collapsed in an elevator. I’m sure everyone at Shrew & Company has learned to lie by omission when they have to report on their health and wellbeing. They almost always get called out on their carelessness, but sometimes—they can keep their secrets. No one will weasel the information out of you. They’ll let the skeletons in your closet be your own until you’re ready to be rid of them.”

Of course she was ready to be rid of them. She was tired of so many things in her life having to be secrets, but there’d never been anyone in her peer group she could tell things to. In fact, growing up, she hadn’t had many peers. Being who she was and related to who she was made her a loner by default. She’d had no choice but to keep her own counsel, and what Soren was telling her sounded too good to be true.

She wanted to tell the Shrews everything. She wanted to tell them what she was and what could happen to her, but only after she’d proven that her handicap didn’t have to stop her from doing the work.

In spite of her circumstances in that bathroom, she could do the job, but perhaps Soren was right. There was nothing wrong with conserving herself when she needed to. She didn’t have to do everything on her own.

“I…need some help.” She’d given up on the other sock. Her foot was so far away. “Please.”

“Of course I’ll help you. What would you like me to help you with?”

Nothing. Everything.

She sighed. “That sock. It’s far.”

“Okay. I’ll start with the sock.” He kneeled and slipped his index finger into the elastic, carefully pulling the sock over her heel and past her arch without a single tickle. “You’re ice cold, but it’s soaked.”

She grimaced. “It’s not sweat.” Her tone was defensive, and he cut her a questioning look. “I’m sorry. I only mean that it shouldn’t smell.”

“I’m simply pointing out the improbability that you’d be losing water when your body isn’t retaining heat.”

“I’m not losing water.” She was water.

“Why are you so vague? Why can’t you tell me what’s happening?”

“Not now.” She raised her arms over her head for him to help with her shirt. “Please?”

“Yes.” To his credit, he didn’t dawdle or ogle. He got the shirt over her head and tossed it outside the bathroom onto the pile he’d started with her socks. “Pants?”

She gave a weak nod, and leaned forward the best she could as he worked her belt free and got her button and fly open.

“You’re going to have to stand, or…” He shrugged. “Can’t pull them off from this position without hurting you.”

“I’ll get up.” She cleared her throat and let her eyelids drift closed.

“When?” He had the nerve to laugh.

“In a moment.”

“I see.” He nudged a warm hand around her waist and leaned her forward. Another hand snaked beneath her knees. Then she was up over his shoulder, and he was working her pants down.

“Never tell anyone about this.”

Her pants hit the floor with a thud. She probably still had a knife or two in the pockets.

“I assure you,” he said, “I can keep secrets better than anyone you’ve ever met.”

He slid her down his body, gripping her tight against him until her feet touched the cold tile floor.

She didn’t open her eyes. She just breathed against Soren’s chest and tried to meditate on the rhythm. Walking the short distance to the tub and then getting into it shouldn’t have been too difficult. Getting started, however, would require a smidgen of effort.

A smidgen seemed too much.

“Should you…” His hands, calloused and hot, pressed to her spine and her waist. He propped her up with light, but strong, touches. She wasn’t going to pretend that the balance she was currently exhibiting had anything to do with her. That was all him. She was basically a doll that couldn’t remain upright without her discreet plastic stand. “Should you take off your bra?”

“On. Off.” She pulled in a breath and then exhaled. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Up to you. I can put your clothes in the dryer because they’re all a bit damp, but if you want me to take your undergarments with me…”

“Fine.”

“Yes?”

“Go ahead.” Maybe she wouldn’t remember how humiliated she felt by the time she was fully functional again, but even if she was embarrassed, she was more certain than ever that Soren wouldn’t say anything. He wouldn’t make a big deal out of the circumstances.

And maybe she’d never felt such bliss as the unhooking of her bra and the freedom of her breasts. Or how her body felt light enough to float away when he pulled her panties down with an efficient tug at one side, then the other.

Freedom was being able to move how she wanted—how her body needed her to.

“Do I need to put up your hair?” he asked. “Or do you not care if your dreadlocks get wet?”

“I prefer not to, but I won’t be bothered if it does.”

“Tell me how to pin it up.”

“No.”

“You don’t want me to touch you?”

He was already touching her in a far more intimate manner than any man had in years. For him to be such a sexual creature, there was nothing even remotely lascivious about the way he was treating her.

“I really don’t care if you touch my hair. You can if you want. I’m simply telling you not to waste the effort.”

“Okay.” He lifted her a couple of inches off her feet and walked her to the tub side. “Ready.”

“Mmm.” She skimmed her hands up his cloth-covered back and tried to remember what she forget about her and water.

Once she got in, she’d…

Oh.

She opened her eyes and grabbed the shower grip, moving completely free of his body. “I can—I’m okay from here.”

Once she touched the water, she’d merge completely into the liquid until all of the energy that belonged to her had recharged and decided to come back together. That could take minutes or hours.

She was fully exposed, showing everything there was that could give a man pleasure, but his gaze was on her face, his expression intense, but calm.

After a minute, maybe a little more, he gave a curt nod and moved to the doorway. “I’ll be out there. Call if you need anything.”

“I shouldn’t need anything, but thank you.”

“What did I tell you?”

She raised a weak hand in concession and sighed. “Fine. I’ll ask for help.” She lifted her foot over the tub side, hinting that he should go, but before he did, she said. “If I will, you have to agree to do the same.”

“What are you talking about?”

She dipped her big toe into the water to check the temperature, and quickly withdrew it before Soren could see that just that quickly, her entire foot had started to lose color. “Your parents.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I can help you with your problem.”

“Oh?”

“Mm-hmm. Help you get the chore over with so you don’t have to think about it again.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?”

“Tell me who he is. Once I’m back on my feet, I can deal with him in a way that’ll leave no evidence. Convince me first that he deserves to meet his end, though.”

“He definitely deserves it.”

She’d have to be the judge of that. “So we have a deal?” She wanted some leverage in case he learned too many of her secrets. The scale had to be balanced. “You help me, and I help you.”

“We shouldn’t need a deal for you to agree to let me help you. I do that because I want to.”

Want to.

He was so damned persistent in a way no one else had ever been, but she couldn’t let him distract her—not when she wasn’t thinking clearly. Not when she was so easy to manipulate.

“Yes or no, Soren.”

“Of course, Marcella. Whatever you’d like.”

“Good. Now, if you don’t mind?” She indicated the door with her free hand.

Soren nodded, stepped away from the frame, and closed the door almost all the way.

She didn’t bother scolding him for leaving it partially open. He wanted to be able to hear her, and she didn’t have the energy to demand complete privacy. In fact, she couldn’t even put her brain in gear to produce one good argument.

She stepped one foot into the bath, and then the other, and had barely kneeled to control the splash before her cellular cohesion gave out and flesh became liquid.